


Gift or Curse

by AyYouFiction



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-16 22:53:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12352212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AyYouFiction/pseuds/AyYouFiction
Summary: It happened to his father. It happened to his brothers. And then it happened to him. Everyone he's talked to about it described it as the most frightening experience of their life, but for Peeta, it's something different.





	1. 1997

**Author's Note:**

> Yup, getting back into the swing of writing. While I've been settling back into the weeds of SG, my poor brain has been bombarded with ideas for a few "short" stories. This one poured right out. Over 12000 words in two days, so I'm not sure how much you guys will like it. Because it's pre-written and so long, I'm going to release it in small chapters but over the course of days instead of weeks (or months in some unfortunate cases *cough* SG). This gives me time to look over what's posted in small chunks rather than a large whole.
> 
> It's a fusion of HG and a particular storyline from a TV miniseries (much like my Troubled fic). I won't name the miniseries until all of the chunks are uploaded so that most of you can have fun with the mystery, but I'm sure a few of you will recognize and figure it out.
> 
> Keep in mind, no beta. So read at your own risk.
> 
> I own nothing of the original Hunger Games content nor the original content of the other to-be-named franchise. Everything else is mine.

Peeta dreams of bright lights and strange sounds. The room he shares with his two brothers is bursting with energy in the air but nothing and no one is moving.  
  
From the corner of his eyes, he watches his eldest brother, Dew, hover above his bed.  
  
His eyes meet Peeta's and are wide and brimming with fear, but he doesn't move other than hovering. Something smooth, round, and gray bobs at the other side of him, hiding its full form from Peeta's view.  
  
The dream becomes hazier as Dew floats away and out of the room, and Peeta doesn't wake from the dream until someone screams. it's Dew, holding his blankets around his body and crying out for their mommy and daddy.  
  
Peeta and his older brother, Cotta, look on helplessly, even as their father bursts into their room with a baseball bat. He looks around the room frantically, expecting to find something to swing at, but finding nothing but three very scared little boys—one who hasn't stopped screaming—in their beds.  
  
Their father wraps both arms around Dew and rocks him gently, whispering in his ear.  
  
"No, Daddy!" Dew protests, "It's not going to be okay." Peeta's never seen Dew cry—his eldest brother has always the strongest of the three—but tonight he does.  
  
Their mother stands at the door, clutching her robe tightly. "Jake," she calls to Peeta's father, but pauses to swallow hard," was it..."  
  
She's unable to form the full question but his father doesn't need her to in order to respond with a mournful nod.  
  
Dew hasn't been the same, always afraid to go to sleep. Often he tries to stay awake the whole night.  
  
Their family moves several times in a year at their mother's insistence. With that strange, haunted look in his eyes, their father says it won't matter, and it doesn't. Dew wakes up screaming three more times no matter where they've moved...  
  
And then Cotta, his older brother, screams in the night.


	2. 2000

It's been over a year since Dew or Cotta woke up screaming. It was four nights total for Cotta as well.  
  
His family stopped moving since Cotta's third night when their mother finally believed their father, how moving wouldn't stop them from being taken.  
  
No longer moving from town to town, no longer dreading someone hovered over their bed or woke in the night screaming, Peeta was finally free to make friends at school and live a normal home life.  
  
He celebrates his sixth birthday with a party of his classmates and goes to bed for the first time without worrying.  
  
There's a tightness in his belly as though his navel were being pulled inside. He dreams of hovering over his bed, but when he tries to move and can't. He starts to panic. His eyes dart around wildly, hoping that the strange hold will break if he tries hard enough.  
  
No amount of struggling will help.  
  
In the corner of his eye, Peeta catches Dew and Cotta staring and unmoving. He remembers being in their place, not being able to move and helplessly watching. No matter how much he pleads with his eyes for them to help, he knows they can't.  
  
Three gray forms are at the side of him, guide his floating body out of the door and down the hall. Shadows gather until he can't see where he is. All that's there when he comes to a full stop is a blinding white light shining down on him. For the first time, he can see the gray beings with their bald, oversized heads on stick bodies, eyes almost too large for their heads with tiny noses and mouths as though they were an afterthought.  
  
They stare at him with the black pupils the size of his fists, and they make him want to hide if he could only move.  
  
There are pinches here and pin pricks there but he's felt worse from some rough play with his brothers. It's the eyes, large and black focusing on him that brings that first tear to his eyes.  
  
The room goes black, and he's staring into nothingness which hurts when light floods in all at once. There's daylight, filtered through trees but overly bright. Able to move his head looking around, he experiments with his arms, and then his legs.  
  
He's on a metal table set in the middle of a forest. Birds chirp from the tops of the trees but it contrasts with the cold metal he sits on. It makes him more afraid.  
  
Curling his legs close, he rests his chin on his knees and doesn't try to fight back the tears. He tries to fight the trembling, though. Only one battle at a time.  
  
And then it's there in the air. A soft, ethereal voice rings through the trees, and he all but forgets his fear, sliding off of the table and following it deeper into the woods.  
  
If he looked back, would the table still be there? He doesn't know. He doesn't care.  
  
Where the trees and brush grow dense, he recognizes the song. The Valley Song. Once, a teacher sang it for the class several towns ago in his past.  
  
The voice is clear and close, and when he pushes his way through tightly packed bushes under the cover of towering trees, there's a girl sitting in a clearing among a field of brightly colored wildflowers. She sings with her back to him, her hand caressing the tops of the highest flowers.  
  
The sun shines down on her, causing her brown skin to glow golden and her dark brown hair in two braids to shine and shimmer.  
  
He stands rooted in his spot, wondering if she's one of them, but her skin isn't gray and she has hair.  
  
Taking a tentative step into the field towards her, his foot lands squarely on a twig and snaps it in half.  
  
Her song stops and her head whips around, the two dark braids swinging.  
  
"Oh, hello," she greets him.  
  
How could he ever hare thought she was one of them? Her eyes are large but nothing unusual or unnatural about them, and they're gray. Not her skin, though, which is a glowing, warm brown. She's around his age.  
  
"Hello," he says but his voice squeaks with his nervousness, venturing closer to her.  
  
"What's your name?"  
  
He should tell her "Peter" the way his mother tells him to use his given name in school, but he likes his nickname.  
  
"Peeta. My name is Peeta."  
  
"I'm Katniss," she tells him right before giving the warmest, friendliest smile. "Do you want to be friends?"  
  
He nods because he likes having friends after years of moving. He sits next to her and finds out quickly that she's as chatty as he is, telling him stories of how her father would take her into woods almost exactly like these, and how her mother would join them with a basket for a picnic in a meadow much like the one they're sitting in.  
  
He tells her stories about his brothers, Drew and Carter, and how his father can bake anything, and his mother's good with numbers.  
  
And when he's settled and relaxed, he feels a pull deep in his belly. At first, he thinks she's moving away from him, but he's the one moving, hovering away from her. He doesn't want to go back to them. He wants to stay in the meadow with Katniss, so he fights.  
  
Shadows gather again, but when they dissolve, he's flailing in his bed, tangled in his blankets.  
  
"Come back! "he demands loud enough for the whole house to hear. He hopes it is so that if they're still in the house they can hear him. Drew and Carter stand at the side of his bed sharing knowing looks. Their father bursts in with his bat and like his brothers, wraps his arms around Peeta, whispering how everything will be okay. That he and Drew and Carter survived, and Peeta will too.  
  
It's no comfort, so Peeta wails out, "Nooo. They took me away from my friend!"  
  
"Who, Peeta ? Who did they take you away from?"

Peeta sniffles, "Her name is Katniss."


	3. 2006

The night he was taken, Peeta had been included into a secret fraternity consisting solely of his father, his brothers, and now him. They would only discuss what happened to them with each other. Rarely with his mother, and never with people outside of their home.  
  
His father's father was the first known in the family to be abducted. He went insane, spending half his life in a _special_ hospital. Never sharing stories about the man before, Peeta's father described him freely now that they were a part of the secret.  
  
Peeta's father was taken at six years old, too. Four times, like Drew  & Carter. That was one way Peeta's experience was different. He'd only been taken once.  
  
The other difference was that the fear he felt about it was secondary to his longing to see Katniss again. He often wonders what happened to the girl.  
  
It didn't take long, though, before he could on longer discuss his experience with them, tired of hearing, "You're lucky,Peeta. They only took you once." They don't understand the pained look he gets when reminded. He's tried to explain, tried to describe Katniss and how nice she was, but all they would do is mutter _no matter how nice someone is, they can't make the experience right_.  
  
They didn't meet Katniss. They didn't understand.  
  
Three weeks before his twelfth birthday, Peeta feels the tug at his navel and his body's floating above his bed. The gray beings are at either side of him. It doesn't matter that he feels several pin pricks and pressure on his arms and legs legs; he's excited he'll see the girl with the two dark braids and hear her angelic voice again.  
  
It's not long before he's in the woods again, but there's no song to guide him through the trees this time. He navigates from memory his way to what Katniss called "the meadow."  
  
She's there, but this time her body's scrunched in: her thin legs pulled in close to her body and her arms, just as bony, wrapped around them with her left cheek resting on her knees.  
  
Her head snaps up as he inches closer. There's no twig, but she hears him all the same. Her large, gray eyes bearing dark circles underneath blink back tears that haven't shed yet, and her hollow cheeks are wet with those that have.  
  
"What's wrong?" he asks, kneeling in front of her. "Are you okay?"  
  
Just enough to meet his eyes, she lifts her head up and shakes it. "My daddy died and mommy won't get out of bed, "she manages to tell him in between sniffles along with something about snow and a coin.  
  
He's wanted to see her for so long, and thought many times how happy he would be if he could, but all he can think of as another tear trails down her cheek is how he can make her feel less sad.  
  
When Peeta's pet guinea pig died, Drew and Carter got him to laugh by reminding him of all of the funny things she did, how soft her fur was, how she'd give a special squeal when he held her because she recognized him. Recounting those stories made him feel less sad, so he plucks a pretty yellow flower and offers it to her. "Will you tell me about your Daddy? What was he like?"

He's rewarded with a slight upturn of her lips, the closest thing to a smile from her that he's going to get under the circumstances. That's a start.


	4. 2010

He's not taken again. It's been four years, and he worries for Katniss everyday of those years.  
  
Her father died, and from the stories she shared with him, he was a huge chunk of her life that was suddenly and perhaps harshly torn from her. It often left him with the question of how he would feel if either of his parents had died.  
  
The thought haunted him for years, prompting him to spend more time with them.  
  
"What's wrong with you, Peeta?" his father asks him on one of the several nights he chooses to spend at home with his mom and dad. "Shouldn't you be out with your friends on a Saturday night?"  
  
Not much more than a shrug as an answer, Peeta silently continues to watch the movie his mom picked. It's not that he's interested in it, something about a nurse and a soldier falling in love during World War 2, but that he can't tell his father why he chooses to stay at home. It has to do with Katniss and what she went through, but he can't tell his father that.  
  
He's long since learned sharing his experiences of being taken by the strange, gray creatures make his father and brothers uncomfortable. The topic alone makes his mother uncomfortable.  
  
The experiences of his father and his brothers were far different from his own, filled with nothing but discomfort and fear. His father, especially, because on top of his own encounters, his home life was a mother who drank herself into an early grave and a father who spent most of his adult life in a constant state of fear or anger or both. So for his father and brothers, listening to him speak of a meadow, a song, a girl, and woods only caused their brows to furrow and their fingers to drum on their laps. Eventually he'd lose their attention altogether.  
  
Where they want to commiserate or forget, Peeta wants to hold on to the memory of Katniss.  
  
He thinks about her all of the time, wondering if she ever smiled again, if her mother is still catatonic with grief.  
  
A lot could happen in four years. There was no doubt he'd changed since he'd last seen her. How much had she changed?  
  
The second movie of the night, his father's choice, was a political intrigue Peeta didn't fully follow, or maybe it was that he didn't really want to follow. Either way, he was relieved to see the closing credits. At least the next movie night would be his turn to pick the movie. His parent call it a night, not long after. Peeta, however, decides to watch TV just a bit longer.  
  
Flipping through the channels, he settles on some fantasy horror movie edited for network TV to the point of comedy. A woman screams and runs through a cemetery at night only to fall midway through. The voices begin to drift into the background and filter through a haze of his impending sleep. A series of lights flash and at first, Peeta assumes it's the movie.  
  
"Ask if Volasta is right for you," the commercial drones, and he knows the lights are something different, something more familiar. It's confirmed when that pull in his gut, right along his navel, starts. He's floating above the sofa. He doesn't care that are taking him, the strange gray beings, or whatever it is they do to him while pinching and prodding. All he can think about is that he's going to see Katniss.

Sure enough, when they're through with him, he's in the woods again. There's a song in the air again, a voice he hadn't heard since he was six.  
  
“Deep in the meadow,” she sings to him, “under the willow…”  
  
He stumbles over a few tree roots in his haste to get to her.  
  
“A bed of grass…” Rushing makes it more difficult to navigate the low-hanging tree limbs and bush branches, but he pushes through them to get to her. “…a soft green pillow…”  
  
And there she is, in the center of the meadow, singing under the sun that he knows can't be real. Its light shines down on her, bathing her in a radiant glow. “Katniss!”  
  
Inhaling to sing the rest of the song, she turns to face him and exhales. “I hoped you would be here.”  
  
He doesn’t think, he just does, rushing to her and wrapping his arms around her body. There’s a shadow of pain in her eyes, something he figures will always be with her from the loss of her father, but she’s not as broken as she was last time he saw her.  
  
“I was so worried about you,” he murmurs into her braid with his cheek pressed against hers. “The last time I saw you, you were…”  
  
Some distance is put between them, just enough for her to see his face. “I was,” she says. The smile she gives is hesitant, reserved, but she can smile again which gives him some comfort.  
  
“Your mother? Did she ever recover?”  
  
“Yes,” she says, “thanks to you.”  
  
“Me?” If anything, there was very little he could do to help. All they did was talk, and it was once in four years.  
  
“You reminded me of all the things my father taught me. You reminded me of the memories I still have of him. No one can ever take that away from me, not even Snow and Coin.”  
  
This time it strikes him that Snow and Coin may not be things but names of People. She'd mentioned them last time, but Peeta assumed her father was killed in snowy mountains or money trouble.  
  
He's ready to ask about them, but notices how the mere mention of the names bring a cloud of pain to her eyes, so he tries to steer the conversation away from them. He just wants to revel in her happiness.  
  
“So after last time, when I went back home, I had renewed purpose. I made sure that my mother didn’t forget him, that he lives on in us. She came back slowly after that. She said I reminder her of him.”  
  
“Good,” he tells her, tightening his grip around her as he focuses on her large, gray eyes. He was too excited when he first reached Katniss to notice the changes the years brought about in her. No longer skin and bones and wasting away with grief, her cheeks are plump and her skin glows. His arms are wrapped around the slight curves of her waist, and the gentle swell of her chest presses against his. The two braids are gone, replaced by one sloped the side. She's prettier than he imagined she would be.  
  
He doesn't know how long he has with her and that creates the urgency to seize the moment. He leans forward to press his lips to hers, but it doesn't go as expected. It seems Katniss had the same intention, and with both rushing into the moment, their foreheads and their noses collide. They both take a free hand to rub their foreheads, chuckling with their embarrassment.  
  
“Sorry,” they both apologize at the same time, looking down and around nervously, but Peeta refuses to let her go. Their eyes meet again, and with nervous glances because they both know what they intend to do, they try again. Peeta doesn't close his eyes for this one until he can see where her head tilts and moves in the opposite direction.  
  
When her lips touch his, it's everything and nothing of what he thought his first kiss would be. It's better. So much better. Her body melts into his, or is it the other way around? Her mouth is so soft and warm against his. He wants to taste more of her, and in the heat of the moment swipes his tongue experimentally against her lips. She answers by parting them for him, and the woods and the meadow might as well not even exist anymore. All he knows is that he wants this to last forever. His body reacts to the change in their kisses, the taste of her mouth, and her body pressed against him. He doesn't want her to know what's going on with him so he immediately draws some space between them to give himself a moment to calm down.

She's confused by the sudden change in him, the sudden distance, but then he, slowly and purposefully, presses his still sore brow to hers. "I've missed you," he breathes.

“I’ve missed you, too,” she admits as well. He notices in his periphery there’s a dandelion flower tucked behind her ear. “I always hope they will bring you here.”  
  
It’s an odd way to phrase it. She didn’t say “bring _them_ here.”  
  
“Do they drag you here more than this?”  
  
She pulls her head back and blinks at him as though processing his question. "They bring me here," she says but doesn’t say more so he doesn’t ask. In fact, he doesn’t want to ruin the moment of her in his arms, her head tilting to rest on his shoulder, the scent of Katniss in his nose, and the tingle of where her lips had been.  
  
He really does wish he could stay here forever; he wants to be able to hold her and kiss her forever. And when the tug begins and they’re pulled apart, he fights harder than any of the other times before to stay. The only comfort comes when she calls out for him. "Peeta!"


	5. 2012

It’s the last week of May, and Peeta celebrates his first days of freedom and adulthood as an eighteen year old having graduated high school.

Lacy Rorke corners him in the wooded area that covers two thirds of her backyard. The bulk of her party covers the cleared half acre, but Peeta wanted a quiet minute or two to breathe. To his dismay, she followed him.  
  
“Don’t you think I’ve waited long enough, Peter Mellark?” she asks him as she pins him against the tree with her body, pressing her lips to his.  
  
The bonfire in her backyard is little more than a glow of light through the trees, the only light he can see. It doesn't really matter how bright or dim it is, even in his inebriated state, to know the hair color of the girl kissing him is wrong, the eye color is wrong. Everything is wrong about this. “I’ve gotta take a piss,” he slurs as he slides himself from between her and the tree.  
  
“I can wait,” she huffs with her hands on her hips and her brow cocked.  
  
She’s been relentless this last year, constantly hounding him for a date. Just one date. He knows Lacy loves a challenge and she finds him the ultimate challenge.

It’s a school-wide fact that his brothers were notorious in their dating. Between the two of them, they dated almost every girl in the school, but Peeta, not a one. When the rumors started that he was gay, Peeta didn’t care. He thought, perhaps it would free him from the attention of the girls in his school. It didn't. Not only did he have girls seek him out even more aggressively, he’d added boys in school to the ever-increasing list of people hitting on him. Whether considered available or a challenge, all Peeta wanted was to not be considered at all.  
  
The couple of girls he’s were great and all, but they didn’t smell like Katniss. Even tonight, with Lacy in the woods, she doesn’t smell anything like Katniss. After four years of high school, though, he's running out of excuses. His mother’s always been worried about him, but now his father and brothers are too. Drew and Carter even sat him down to have a talk the last time they were home from college.  
  
“Look, we haven’t said anything before but…” Drew began, but Carter finished the thought, “But you can’t waste your life on a girl when you don’t even know if she actually exists or not. She could've been something they cooked up to keep you compliant.”  
  
It was that very moment Peeta understood why his stories made them uncomfortable. All this time, he assumed it was because they didn't want to think of the abductions as anything close to a positive experience, but actually, they thought she wasn’t real. They thought the gray creatures were using some image of a girl to brainwash him, to hijack his perception of what's real and what isn't. He had to admit, there were some things that didn't add up.  
  
So after he relieves himself in Lacy’s wooded backyard, he tucks himself back in and decides to give the girl a chance. After all, she deserves a chance because she is real and he deserves something real.  
  
And then the lights come. They'd never come when he was awake or away from home, but here they are in the woods on the opposite side of where he’d left Lacy. The pull starts at his navel, and he's weightless and floating through the trees. Branches avoid him as he passes.  
  
There are only two pinches for whatever the gray creatures do to him and then he’s in the woods, _her_ woods, sober. He looks around with a skeptical eye, now noticing how everything is too bright, shines a little too much.  
  
_See, Peeta. It isn’t real_ , says a voice in his head that sounds like Carter that competes with her voice ringing through the woods. For the first time, he’s hesitant to follow. For the first time, Peeta questions everything about this place and the girl he’s longed for since he was six.  
  
The sun is too bright. The tree leaves almost sparkle reflecting the sun. The clouds flow a little too much like liquid than air. All of these things he hadn’t noticed before, but when he looks at them, really looks at them, every detail is off somehow.  
  
He takes a reluctant step out of the woods and into the meadow. She’s there, sitting in the grass that’s far too green with her legs tucked underneath her. She’s wearing a dress that isn’t shiny or bright, but faded from years of wash and worn thin. She smiles when she sees him and pats the grass beside her.  
  
It’s hard to miss the way he squats down, keeping a healthy distance and a wary eye between them. It’s hard to miss the scowl on her face at this too.  
  
“Are you real?” he asks as he examines every bit of her. Like her clothes, it’s out of place in the excessive environment. Her skin is a glowing shade of brown but it’s a normal glow of skin, not the glaring brightness of everything around them. She cocks her head to the side and then nods as though she finally understands what he’s asking.  
  
“I’m real, Peeta. As real as you are." He doubts that, and she must by his expression that he doubts that. "You know, there were times when I wondered if you were real too. But then I learned to tell the difference.”  
  
The last time they’d been here together, he learned that she came here more often than him. Perhaps she had more time to figure out how to tell real from not real. “So,” he settles into the grass, “what’s your secret to knowing the difference.”  
  
She looks around at their surrounds and points to the sun, the sky, the clouds, the trees. “They’re all too bright, too…much, as though _they_ can’t get the particulars right for our perception.” Pointing towards the woods, she adds, “But they’re not...off...when we see them because its what they really look like.”  
  
He knows she's not talking about the woods, she's talking about the gray creatures, and he recalls the dull gray of their skin and the deep black pools of their eyes. Everything about them is unsettling, but not...off.  
  
Finally, she points to him, “And you’re not, which means you're real.”  
  
He can’t help himself; he smiles at that. “I am real.”  
  
“And so am I.”  
  
“So where are you? Where do you live? I’m eighteen, now. I can come find you.”  
  
Katniss shakes her head and pulls back from him. “It’s too dangerous.”  
  
“For you or for me?”  
  
“Both. Snow and Coin may find me through you…or they may decide you’re interesting because they bring your here. “  
  
Finally, he has the opportunity to ask the question he couldn't before. “Who are Snow and Coin?”  
  
Katniss hesitates for a while, and finally swallows hard to prepare herself. “They hunted my father. Since he died, they don't hunt me anymore. I guess they don't find me or my mother important enough.”  
  
There’s a pained expression on her face. When her arms wrap around herself, all of his doubts are forgotten, and he rushes forward on his knees to hold her in his arms. All he wants to do is protect her from whomever these people are, but he’ll have to find her to protect her. By the tightness of her lips and the set of her jaw, she’ll never tell him. So he’ll just have to figure it out on his own.  
  
“I’ve missed you, Peeta. So much,” she sighs roughly as though she's forcing out the confession. Her fingertips tremble as they trace an unknown pattern along one of his arms, and he turns his head so that he can meet his eyes to hers.  
  
“I’ve missed you, too. Although, I was starting to believe I was missing a fantasy.”  
  
“And now?”  
  
“They could never think up someone so perfect.”  
  
Her lips are pressed to his in a heartbeat, and they taste as wondrous as they had two years ago. He feels giddy and almost drunk again and gives in completely when he finds himself on his back in the soft grass. He’s hers. He was always hers.  
  
The kisses are gentle, playing with her lower lip between both of his, but then they give way to the swipe and caress of tongues. It doesn't take long for their mouths to no longer be enough. Hands explore until their clothes are lost to the grass and flowers around them. Katniss’s face hovers above his, he doesn’t care that their surroundings aren’t real. What’s real is her skin on his, her lips against his, her body sinking down onto him.  
  
She’s tentative at first, but soon she’s rocking her hips in an rhythm as unsteady as his own pushing up to meet her. It’s awkward as hell, but for him it’s enough. Every muscle in his body tightens to the point of being painful until the release comes a little too quickly. This is nothing like the release he finds in the shower or his bed in the dead of night. This is a dream, but it's real. It has to be real.  
  
After a minute or two, he finally finds his voice and his wits again. He wraps his arms around her as she rests on top of him, her head nestled on his chest.  
  
It feels like they’ve been in the meadow for hours, longer than he’d ever been here. They’d come together twice more and Peeta’s tired and ready for sleep. It’s clear Katniss is as well the way she curls into his side and doesn’t move. Her breathing slows with every passing minute.  
  
And then there’s the pull.  
  
“No!” he yells out to the creatures, feeling the tug at his navel and her slipping from his grasp. He's yelling so much his throat hurts. They can't take him away! Not now! Not when he has no doubt he's meant to be with her. “I’ll find you, Katniss!” he promises right before he becomes immobile, drifting through the meadow and the woods.


	6. 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, everyone. After this, there are only 3 more chapters. Those three chapters combined are over half the length of the story, so there's that, but because they're larger, they'll more than likely take longer to get to, edit, and post.

“Peeta, you’ve gotta let this go,” Drew pleads, looking at his baby brother's collection of discs, several silvery stacks of recordings on a desk cluttered with printed news-clippings. There are several other clippings pinned to the wall. Recording equipment take up most of the space in his small apartment.    
  
“People online call you the crackpot, the weirdo who tapes the crazies.”  
  
“They’re not crazy. You both know as well as I do, they’re not crazy!” Peeta supposes the crazed look in his eyes doesn’t help his case. He knows his brothers are only looking out for him. They have ever since their parents died in a car crash three years ago, but he won’t let his brothers sow the seeds of doubt in him again. He continues to work at their family's business, but what he does with his personal time is his own.  
  
“Alright, Peeta. Fine. They’re not crazy. But what do you hope to accomplish with all of this?”  
  
“You know what he wants, Drew. We’ve always known what he wants.”  
  
“Fuck, Peeta. She’s not real. You've gone five years without being…”  
  
His eldest brother still can’t bring himself to say the word, but Peeta can. “Abducted. It’s been five years since I was abducted.” He stresses the word, making both brothers cringe each time.  
  
“You were…taken…four times. Like us. Don’t you think they’re done with you, too.”  
  
“Maybe. Maybe not," he says, folding his arms to tell them exactly what they need to know about how far they're going to get, "but she’s out there. Somewhere.”  
  
Like every other time they’ve tried to persuade him to reconsider his "hobby," they begin to back off. He knows it's temporary. It's the way it always is when he won’t budge. And he won't, especially this time. His last batch of recordings have given him a lead he least expected.  
  
“You should listen to Haymitch Abernathy,” said a woman he interviewed last week. Her abduction story, like his brothers' and father's, was four times in her childhood, and then nothing. “Listen to his podcasts if you have the time. If not, you should at least read his book."  
  
Peeta hadn't had the chance to read the man's book, published when he was eleven, but after the first audio file, Peeta obsessively combed through the hundreds posted, for weeks. Seems Haymitch Abernathy was a well known skeptic, hell bent on debunking all abduction claims, but something turned him into true believer. So far in Peeta's wade through the recordings, Abernathy mentions how he’d had his own life changing moment. He'd finally witnessed for himself just how real those gray creatures are. He never says exactly what that life changing moment was. Perhaps its in the book that Peeta plans on reading eventually.

At this point, though, those podcasts are his life, because they are his only clue into Katniss's life. He never expected the connection, but there it was at the end of every podcast: “They’re watching us, people. That hidden, secret, and very dangerous part of the government hell-bent on keeping us confused and wondering what’s real and what isn’t. Snow’s on the ground and the coin’s in play, if you know what I mean. Goodnight all.”  
  
Peeta turns to his brothers and sighs. “Look guys, I’m tired. I need some sleep,” he tells them, but what he really does after they leave his apartment is listen to more of Haymitch Abernathy’s podcasts, hoping for more information on Snow and Coin.


	7. 2020 (pt1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even though these next 3 chapters are longer compared to the first 6, this one's the longest. I couldn't break it up without either adding another chapter for size sake or splitting it in the middle of a very tense scene. Didn't want to do either. So here you are, a 5000+ word chapter. Happy reading everyone.

Peeta sets up his tripod and snaps the digital camera into it. The lighting isn’t very good, but it’ll do. He’s on vacation, following the sightings of Haymitch Abernathy. There have been some alien abductee support groups he’s been reported to have visited and Peeta’s dedicated his entire two week vacation to interview each one. This one happens to be in New York City.

Effie Trinket is the counselor charged with leading the group, tasked with helping people learn to live with what they’ve been through. “Well, almost everyone has agreed, Peter. We’re just waiting for one more of our regulars.”

He nods at the woman with the perfectly manicured fingernails and overly done make-up standing on stiletto heels. Peeta wonders how a woman like her could be a comfort to people coping with abduction.

“So why are you so interested in recording us freaks?” asks a woman not much older than him. The pixie cut of her brown hair spikes at the ends working well with the hard edge to her expression. “Plan on having a good laugh at us or something?”

“Johanna…right?” At least he thinks that’s her name when Effie asked for her permission to tape them. She nods and he smiles. He’s dealt with this question before. “I have my own alien story.”

Her brow cocks at that and she leans her shoulder on the nearby wall. “Is that so? Gonna share?”

“Maybe,” he says. “But I gotta tell you. I’ve been to a lot of these. I’ve told my story so many times, I can’t say I’m eager to share it again.”

She nods at that and wanders away. If there’s one thing abductees have in common, it’s knowing and resenting how it feels to be a performing monkey to prove what they say is real. That’s why when he records, he tries to stay out of the way, to allow everyone to feel comfortable and not under a spotlight.

“Ah, there you are,” Effie sighs and walks quickly over to the door while Peeta checks the space remaining on the SD card of his camera. "Peter Mellark is here to record the session. Are you comfortable with that, dear?"

“No. Absolutely not!”

The voice stops Peeta in the middle of his checklist. His hand is hovering near the camera and his body is hunched over. And then he turns his head to see the face he’s spent years looking for. She’s still arguing with Effie, who’s trying and failing to persuade her to reconsider, and Peeta uses the time to absorb this version of Katniss. There’s very little sign that she’s grown eight years older, but seeing her outside of the meadow feels less real than the woods and meadow themselves.

Suddenly he realizes that there was a part of him, as small as it might have been, that still believed she might not be real. And now he has proof that she is.

“Katniss?” He says her name in almost a whisper, barely able to push air out of his lungs.

She’s in mid-argument, her mouth open to say something more to Effie but nothing comes out. Her wide eyes are practically bulging, and her once expressive hands drop to her side. “Peeta?”

“Brainless, you know this guy?” Johanna asks, but her voice is in the background, lost in the distance between him and Katniss. “Wait,” she adds as though trying to piece something together, “how do you know this guy?”

“Um…I think…I think we should…cancel this session,” Effie stammers. “Peter and Katniss obviously need to talk.”

Suddenly, Johanna’s laughter fills the entire room, pulling Katniss’s attention from him to the woman and rolls her eyes. “Come on. There’s a coffee shop down the block,” she mutters to him.

The walk is awkwardly silent, but it's nothing compared to sitting across a cafe table from each other. It’s nothing like how he thought their reunion would be once he found her. He wants to take her hand in his, but Katniss seems skittish. He doesn’t want to scare her.

“Why are you here, in New York?” she asks him outright, her right leg nervously bouncing.

“I took two weeks vacation to record stories from alien adductees.”

“Why are you here, Peeta?”

“What was the last thing I said to you before they took me away, after we…”

She looks away from him, out the window at the people walking by. “I didn’t think you’d actually find me.”

He’s getting the feeling he was wrong in looking for her. Dread trickles over his skin with the realization his brothers may have been right. He was wasting his life, for her. The only thing left to do is cut his losses and tell her it was nice seeing her again before running out the door. Leave before she can break his heart more. 

Katniss swallows hard, and says, “I guess I can’t put this off," before digging into her jean pocket.

His feet are already positioned on the floor, ready to stand and go while she pulls out her phone and begins to tap it a couple of times, then lays it on the table between them. For good measure, she turns it to face him. There’s a picture of a beautiful little girl with sparkling gray eyes, sun-kissed skin, and golden blond hair with her skinny arms wrapped around Katniss. “Her name’s Prim. Primrose.”

“She’s beautiful,” he gulps, but the wind has been knocked out of him. He’s too tired, to miserable to rush out the door anymore. All of this time, he’s been pining for her and all these years, Katniss started her own family with someone else. “Congratulations,” he tells her, but his heart isn't in it.

Her eyes narrow on him, then she enlarges the picture to where the girl's face fills the screen. "Look familiar?"

Something is very familiar about the girl, but he can't place it other than sharing some features with Katniss. Whatever that something is doesn't have time to manifest because she doesn't give him the time for a breakthrough. “Peeta, she’s yours.”

At first the words don't make sense. They settle in his mind like a jumble he can't decipher, but then it slowly takes form, because coherent in his mind. “What?” whispers because he's just starting to grasp the information. "What?" he asks, his voice a little firmer. "What?" he's practically screaming at the side table of a tiny cafe in New York City. His eyes dart from the picture to Katniss over and over as though he can dissect her features from the girl and see if he finds his remaining.

His body feels cold and hot at the same time. The more he absorbs the girl’s features, the more he knows she’s telling the truth.

“I think…I think it’s what they wanted when they brought us together last time,” she says and looks down at the picture, a reddish tint floods her brown cheeks. "It might have been their goal all along."

“This is what they do," he spat. "They play with us, with our lives!” Finally, Peeta sees it the way his father and brothers always saw it. They used him, used her, pulling them out of their lives to experiment. Nevermind the consequences, the broken lives they left in their wake. His grandfather, his father, his brothers, the multitude of stories he’s collected. They all tell the same story he’s been resisting. They’re nothing but lab rats to these gray creatures.

After doing the math, he guesses Primrose must be seven and that adds another worry. “Do they take her too?”

Katniss shakes her head. “I know they’re watching, though,” she says, almost fondly. He let’s that part go, relieved that at least Primrose hasn’t had her life upended.

“Can I see her?”

Katniss looks down at the picture on her phone as she struggles with some internal debate before she nods. She takes her phone and texts someone, her fingers flying over the keys on the screen. When she finally looks up again, she asks him a strange question. “Do you like lasagne?”

He’ll eat anything Katniss offers him so long as he gets to see her: Primrose. And in the next breath, he loses his appetite when she demands one condition, something that makes him think twice about agreeing to anything.

“We can’t tell her who you are,” she says. “I don’t want—”

“You don’t want her getting attached to some guy you’ve only seen four other times in your life?”

Sadly, Peeta gets it. He’s angry and it festers having no clear outlet available to unleash it. What he said it the truth. He’s a stranger, some random man who was chosen by strange creatures to donate his genetic material. Obviously being a father wasn’t meant to be a part of that experiment, and yet, here he is. “Do you ever plan on telling her who I am?”

Katniss blinks for a few seconds trying to process his question, and then sighs. “If she asks to know who you are.”

“Has she ever asked about me before?”

“Once.” Katniss lowers her head, her eyes on the tile floor of the coffee shop. “A year ago she asked if she had a daddy.”

Peeta winces at that. He never thought a daughter of his would have to ask that question. It’s another reason for his growing hatred for those creatures, the ones that systematically ruin lives. He swallows. “What did you tell her?”

There’s a growing rosiness to her cheeks and the tips of her ears. “I told her that we were brought together for something very important…to make her. That more than likely there would be no reason for us to be brought together again.”

“Oh,” he huffs. “Is that it then? I’ve served my purpose?” He knows his anger's bleeding out and onto Katniss. He can't help it. 

“Peeta,” she says pleadingly, reaching for his hand but thinking better of it, “I didn’t know that’s what they wanted. I…I…”

He watches her search for the words, her face twisting into a frown as she becomes frustrated with herself, with the situation. He knows she shouldn't be frustrated with herself, or that he should be frustrated with her either. This isn’t her fault. She didn't ask to be snatch from her bed throughout her life, to be impregnated by some guy she'd seen only three times before, ever. It’s not their fault. All Peeta can think is how right his father and his brothers were. How wrong he was for not being scared of them, for not falling for they tricks to placate him while taken.

That's some soul searching he'll need to do another time. The current issue at hand is far more important.

“I’ll accept the condition right now, Katniss, but we’re going to have to revisit this agreement very soon.”

She looks out the window to his right and nods her head as though she really doesn’t want to.

* * *

 

Her apartment is smaller than his back in Georgia, adding to the fact that it has two bedrooms instead of one. There’s no one around which allows his frayed nerves to calm as he thinks of what to say to Primrose?

“Hi. I’m your dad. Nice to meet you,” is out of the question as per their agreement, not to mention as awkward as hell.

“Remember, um…” Katniss starts while fidgeting with her braid and then bites her lower lip. “We keep what you are to her between us.” It’s uncanny that she says this just as he’s thinking about the same topic, but it is the circumstance they find themselves in. What else can they think about other than who he is to Prim?

He nods and the look of relief from Katniss makes him wonder if she thought he would tell her no and blurt out to Prim he’s her long lost father the moment she came through the door.

And on cue, two people are at the door of the apartment. One is the girl from the picture, bursting with energy and talking a mile a minute as she rushes into one of the bedrooms, the one filled with posters of singers and books.

“Hi, Mom. Hi, mister,” the blur calls out. Following her is a woman about the age his mother would be, looking very worn. “To be that age again,” she mutters, dragging herself deeper into the apartment.

“Mom, this is Peeta. Peeta, this is my mom, Lisa Everdeen.” Peeta knows this woman once gave up on life after her husband died. The shadow lingering in her eyes hints of that story even if he hadn't known.

“Nice to meet you, Peeta,” she says while shaking his hand and he returns the pleasantries. There are smiles shared between them until Lisa nudges her head in the direction of the front door for Katniss.

“Subtle, Mom,” Katniss grumbles and both women head towards the door.

“Um, Katniss,” he calls, trying to catch her before she and her mother can undoubtedly discuss him. He isn’t sure how to ask. All he can do is look in the direction of Primrose’s room hoping Katniss will understand. She gives him a subtle nod and turns to continue talking with her mother.

“Is that him,” he catches from Lisa Everdeen before they’re beyond earshot.

Primrose is on her bed, reading one of the many books in her room.

“No offense, but I thought kids your age only read from tablets.” Peeta chuckles but really he’s holding his breath. He doesn’t want know how to act or what to do. It's his first conversation with his daughter.

Primrose cocks her head and smiles at him. “I like the way books feel. Grandma says I’m older than I look.”

“Well, I prefer books, too.”

“Do you want to see my scrapbook? Mom says we can’t have Facebook accounts, but I have my own pictures.”

She makes room on the edge of her bed and reaches for a book decorated with scribbles and impressive drawings. Inside are several pictures printed on regular printer paper. There are a few actual pictures printed on photo stock, but none of them include Primrose in them. As though reading his mind, she points to a couple of photo stock pictures.

“These were the last pictures my mom had printed in a store. Mom likes to print pictures at home.”

She catches him staring at a particular picture, one where Katniss looks exactly how he remembers her almost a decade ago, then giggles. “I’m in the picture too. Mom says it was taken a couple of weeks before she found out I was coming.”

Peeta sees the picture anew. This picture was in fact taken not long after he’d last seen Katniss, when neither realized they were brought together for a reason…that reason staring at him intently.

“What’s your name, Mister?”

He tells her his name and Prim nods while holding out her right hand. “Nice to meet you, Peeta Mellark. I'm Primrose Everdeen, but you can call me Prim.”

Peeta could have sworn out of nervousness he'd given his legal name, but either way, he decides he wants her to know him as Peeta. He’s always been Peeta to family.

“How did you get that name, by the way?” she asks him, closing the scrapbook since the topic has moved on.

“My big brother had trouble with Rs, so he called me Peeta. He couldn’t say his name or my other brother’s name exactly, either. Even though I can’t call them Dew and Cotta anymore, they still call me Peeta to this day.”

She giggles and Peeta realizes he likes the sound of it. He also realizes that her eyes aren’t quite gray. It’s a combination of blue and gray that creates a new, absolutely stunning color. Almost like liquid metal.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” Katniss tells them, popping her head in the doorway of Prim's bedroom before disappearing again.

Prim looks back at him. “I’m glad Mom brought you here. You’re nice.”

“Thank you,” he says, trying desperately to keep his voice even and calm regardless of his nerves. “I’m glad, too.”

* * *

 

The next scheduled meeting for the support group is two days later. It shoots his schedule to hell, having to be in Massachusetts by now, but then, the whole reason for being on this trip was to find some clue of where to find Katniss. Well, he found her and a little girl with blond hair and blue-gray eyes.

Katniss is late, but then Effie had mentioned during the last session that she’s always late coming directly from work.

“So how did the talk with Katniss go,” asks Johanna as she sits two seats away from him. There’s a mischievous look on her face as she rests her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand.

“Leave him alone, Jo. It’s none of your business.”

“But we share, Madge. That’s the whole point of this group.”

“Jo, give it a rest,” grumbles a tall man in the back of the room. He’s leaning against the wall and looks, generally, like he’s angry with life.

Katniss walks in at that very moment. And like the last time, she stops and stares. “Peeta, what are you doing here?”

He looks around the room, at the faces trying desperately to look elsewhere except for Johanna whose chin rests in both hands now. “Where else would I be?”

She rushes to sit in the chair next to him and hisses, “You had a schedule. Interviewing abductees in Massachusetts, remember?”

He remembers telling her and Prim that bit of information during dinner a couple of nights ago. He couldn’t tell them why he was interviewing abductees, though, because that would go against his and Katniss’s agreement not to tell Prim who he is…for now.

“Found more important things here in New York,” he tells her matter-of-factly before turning towards the center of the gathered chairs.

She fumes beside him, looking ahead at nothing in particular. “This wasn’t the deal,” she gripes, not even looking at him this time. “You need to go.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal I agreed to. What I agreed to was not telling Prim…for now,” he says calmly, however, stressing the last to words because he wants Katniss to know where he stands on the matter. He's not sure why she's so determined for him to leave. He's a little hurt by it, but he's not going to let her change his mind.

“You two lovebirds having problems already,” Johanna chuckles, but Effie shakes her head at the woman while taking her seat at the center of the gathered chairs. “Johanna, leave them be.”

Others take their seats from Effie’s cue.

“But I want to know how they know each other.”

“Jo!” Madge, at least that what Peeta remembers Johanna calling her a couple of days ago, rolls her eyes.

“Or if he knows about her daddy. I mean, how many times have we had to listen to how great her experiences were with _them_. How much fun _they_ were. How protected she felt…all because her daddy was supposedly half one of _them_.”

“What?” Peeta all but cries out, jumping out of his seat away from Katniss.

“Jo!” Effie gasps, but Katniss is fuming, or embarrassed. Peeta can’t tell which, not that he cares at the moment.

“What is she talking about?” Peeta focuses solely on Katniss no matter the chaos erupting around them in arguments, and she gives him a scowl in response. “Your father was one of them?”

“Half. Yeah.”

“And you’re…”

“A quarter.”

“And Prim…”

“Okay, okay, it’s time to start the session,” Effie interrupts, but then Johanna interrupts her with the mischievous smirk she’s been carrying around practically since Peeta’s met her. “Um, Effie, I think the session’s already begun.”

“Fine, then. Johanna, why don’t you share your feelings first?”

“I’d much rather listen to theirs.” Johanna casts a lazy finger in the direction of Peeta and Katniss who are still glaring at each other.

“I’ll go first,” speaks up the sour-faced man. “Bristel and I broke up.”

Several people give him sympathetic looks and a couple pat him on the back. “I’m so sorry, Gale,” says the man next to him. Peeta thinks his name is Finnick. It's now that that conversation has moved on and eyes are elsewhere that Peeta returns to his seat. He can feel the tension coming off of Katniss in waves, and he's sure she can feel his as well.

“She says she can’t get past the brick wall I built between us,” Gale sighs loudly, resting his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. “Another one bites the dust.”

Peeta’s attention shifts from Katniss to Gale because it’s a story he’s heard over and over again in his travels. There seems to be an underlying current of mistrust that leaves abductees with a trail of broken relationships. He’d seen it with his brothers and with most of the people he’s interviewed. After hearing so many stories, he's convinced it's all fueled by fear. They're afraid that they could be taken at any moment again, hurting those they've allowed in. And their children would more than likely be taken too. Isn't that what happened to his father? Him and his brothers. It was the first thing he feared for Prim.

“I just wish I could find someone, like how you found Annie,” Gale says to Finnick, but when his voice cracks he clears his throat and doesn’t say more.

“Finnick and I were lucky. We were friends for years, but when we first found out that we were both…taken…we finally found someone who really understood. We know how lucky we are that our experiences actually brought us together.”

Peeta catches the way Katniss eyes him for a brief moment before looking elsewhere.

“Well, the rest of us are broken,” Johanna snaps at Annie. 

Always so soft spoken the few times Peeta’s been around her, he's startled by how her voice hardens. “We’re broken, too, Johanna. It’s just that we’re broken together.”

“Still lucky,” the woman sighs while picking a hair from her shirt with a bored slouch.

“Like I said.”

The two women glare at each other, but they’re distracted when Katniss pops up from her chair and runs to the window.

“Katniss, dear? Is there something wrong?” Effie calls over to her.

“I know it’s early in the session, but can we take break, Effie?”

“Yes, dear. I think that’s a good idea,” the woman says, looking at the ongoing tense glaring match between Johanna and Annie and most likely feeling she has her work cut out for her today.

Peeta watches Katniss stand near the window away from everyone, frantically typing on her cellphone. She’s staring at it, willing the other person to send something.

“Is everything okay,” Peeta asks softly, worried that it may have something to do with Prim. The look in her eyes confirms that it does.

“She’s scared,” Katniss tells his softly, but she breathing rapidly as though she's describing her own fear. She looks down at her phone again.

“How do you know?”

“I just know,” she sighs looking out the window and back at her phone, “and Mom won’t answer her texts. She’s supposed to pick Prim up from the afterschool program.”

“We can take my car and go get her,” he offers. She seems startled by it, then something vulnerable flits across her face until she ultimately shakes her head.

“She’s coming to me.”

“How do you kno…” he starts to ask, but then remembers her last answer to that question.

Finally, her phone screen lights up with the buzz of the vibration and she reads the incoming text. “No. No. No! No!”

He draws in closer, silently asking what’s wrong.

“Snow and Coin found her school,” she tells him in a whisper, trying to avoid the rest of the group milling around from hearing her. Peeta feels his heart plummet into his stomach. He doesn’t know exactly who Snow and Coin are, but he knows that they’re trouble, possibly the cause of her father’s death somehow, years ago.

“We need to go there, now!” Peeta demands, gaining the attention of the people in the room before they look elsewhere to give the couple some privacy…except Johanna, who’s watching them from the other side of the room.

Katniss shakes her head. “She’s not at the school anymore. My mother says Prim ran out of her classroom and out of school before they could find her in it,” she tells him, her hands sliding through her scalp and pulling at the beginning of the braid.

He wants to ask how Prim knew to leave before they got there, but it isn’t the time. The most important thing is to find Prim, but how would they do that?

“We should call the police,” he tells her decisively but is taken aback by how horror-struck she looks at the thought.

“Peeta!” she whispers harshly with her head tilting in close to his. “They are the police!”

He blinks at that and Haymitch Abernathy’s words echo in his mind: “They’re watching us, people. That hidden, secret part of the government hell-bent on keeping us confused and wondering what’s real and what isn’t. Snow’s on the ground and the coin’s in play, if you know what I mean.”

She shakes her head and stares out the window. “I have to stay here. She’s coming to me. She knows her way, and I have to be here when she gets here.”

“Seven years old in the subway and on buses?”

“What else can I do, Peeta?”

Effie has to call them back into the group, but everyone understand when Katniss and Peeta decline joining in. Even so, the rest of the session hobbles along because no one can concentrate on anything other than the two nervously standing by the window. They haven’t said a word for almost a half an hour when Katniss’s body snaps straight. She’s stares at the door to the meeting room as though she expected someone to be standing there, but no one is there.

The rest of the support group turn their heads to the door, wondering what’s going on, but there’s nothing.

Katniss takes in a raspy breath and then Prim’s at the door running straight to her mother’s open arms. She’s not alone. Following her is a man with snow white hair and an the countenance of determination. The woman beside him has an almost cruel twist to her mouth and an unbroken sheet of gray hair that falls over her shoulders.

They both raise their handguns up, aiming at Katniss and Prim. “Katniss Everdeen. We meet at last,” says the man coolly. Katniss pulls Prim around, shielding her daughter with her body.

“We just want your daughter. No harm will come to her. We promise,” says the woman, but not even Peeta can believe that.

The woman levels her gun high at Katniss, and Peeta can see how tense her finger is on the trigger. He knows she’s going to fire. He can feel it in his gut that this woman knows that she will have to take Prim over Katniss’s dead body and is willing to go that far. Pure instinct makes him jump just as he hears the sound of the gun.

The sound of the gun has everyone in a frenzy, screaming and crying and confused, but out of all the voices, Peeta hears Prim loudest of all. She’s screaming, but the pitch is steady and strong and with it, he's forced to the floor. He looks around and notices everyone is on the floor, including Prim. She's on her hands and knees crawling closer to her mother. Snow and Coin on their asses, their guns dropped on the ground and they’re staring blankly.

“Prim, what did you do?” he hears Katniss ask.

Peeta would like to know the answer to that, too, but there’s a searing pain in his chest that only increases each time he tries to draw a breath. Looking down, he watches the large circle of red on his shirt expand, and in the center is a hole. He knows that hole goes deeper than his shirt.

He wheezes with each attempt to take in air, getting so little of it in the effort. He’s suffocating and growing too weak to keep fighting for it.

Snow and Coin. Was this how Katniss’s father died? Did she watch him die? It hurts Peeta to know that his daughter has to watch him die, too, but at least she doesn’t know he’s her father. There’s that small bit of comfort.

There are hands on him, moving him around until he's on his back with his head resting on something. Not strong enough to open them fully, Peeta’s eyes flutter enough to see Katniss staring down at him with tears forming in her eyes. Fingers claw at his shirt. He looks down at his chest to find Prim beside him frantically trying to tear his shirt where the hole is.

“Here,” says Gale’s voice and Peeta’s half aware of Katniss holding a pocket knife. As though he’s watching the world through a sleepy haze, not unlike his abductions, everything no longer feels real. It feels like the woods and the meadow. The cold comes in. He’s cold, so cold. A sure sign that his body is shutting down.

From the din of panicked voices and the foggy distance in his mind, Prim calls to him. “Peeta?”

He’s too tired to answer her. He’d like to tell her that he’s so happy to have met her beforehand, but he can’t even gather the breath to keep himself alive.

“Peeta, look at me,” she requests.

His eyelids are too heavy. Everything is too heavy. He can’t tell her that he can’t. He’s too tired, to ready for the end of all of this. What was the point in fighting a losing battle? He’s never really been needed so why not give in to the void creeping towards him? Katniss and Prim don’t need him. They’ve been doing just find without him. His brothers don’t need him, always making them worry or uncomfortable. What’s the point?

“Look at me!” Prim demands with increasing urgency as though she can sense him slipping away. He wishes it could be different but it’s over. He knows it and she’ll have to learn it too.

And then Prim pleads quietly, “I need you. Please look at me,” she swallows and then takes in a long inhale, “Dad. ”

There’s a burst of warmth that floods his body, a boost of energy, likely adrenaline. The fog in his mind clears just a little to fill his mind with questions, so many questions. His eyes snap open on their own and meet the blue-gray eyes staring back at him. He could swear the color moves like a liquid ring around pupils expanding unnaturally, almost filling her eyes. Where her hand rests on his chest, he starts to warm and it spreads outward through his body. Somewhere beyond the space of him and his daughter, he hears Katniss’s voice strained and fearful, “Prim, you can’t.”

Every second that passes, he feels stronger, clearer, until he can take a full breath.

Prim welcomes him back to the living with a smile. Her pupils are shrinking back to a normal size, a human size, just before they roll back. Her body slumps beside him on the floor. “Prim!” Katniss cries out. “Prim, no!” She’s holding their daughter in her arms and the tears are streaming. Peeta sits up and Katniss looks at him helplessly. “This is what killed my father! It can't happen again. Please don't let it happen again,” she pleads with him, with anyone who can help. She's no longer twenty-six year old Katniss anymore, but that little girl scrunched up and broken in a meadow that wasn't real. She holds Prim's head close to her chest, rocking their bodies together.

Police sirens drift from the window. They aren’t far, now.

“I think you three should go, now!” suggests Effie, although it’s more like a demand. “You can take the service exit, down the stairs to the basement.”

For someone on death’s door a few minutes ago, Peeta feels as energized as if he’d just awoken after a long, refreshing sleep. He doesn’t hesitate, scooping up a very unconscious Prim from Katniss. The way his daughter sags in his arms worries him, but not as much as the need to get her and Katniss and himself out of there.

Katniss is still sitting on the floor, staring out as though she’s watching something play out in her mind. “Katniss, we have to go,” Peeta says firmly, trying to jar her out of he thoughts. It works. She blinks and looks up at him holding their daughter in his arms. She’s on her feel in a second, and they’re at the door in the next to get the hell out of there.

In the hall outside of the meeting room, Snow and Coin sit on the floor, eyes blinking into nothingness. Peeta and Katniss carefully step around them, making sure not to bump and perhaps wake them from whatever Prim did. They leave the building through the service exit just before the police arrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last scene is loosely based on a scene from the miniseries that inspired this fusion. It was such a powerful scene to watch, I hope I did it justice with my everlark version.


	8. 2020 (pt2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 9 apologies to those of you who got the new chapter alert, sorry about that. I made the mistake of loading all of the chapters ahead of time...which means it's very easy to press the wrong button. :(
> 
> Sorry about the delay. Life happened and then when I came back to it, I wanted to add some more details. Turned out to be 3,000 words more. I had to restructure this chapter and will have to for the next, resulting in the last two chapters being a little more robust than I'd originally planned.
> 
> For this chapter, there's a confusing section. You'll know it when you see it. I hope it becomes clear once you pass through it _fully_. If not, let me know. If most of you can't understand it even after reading all of it, I may have to rewrite it. Honestly, though, I like the strange quality it has so I'm hesitant to change it.

It helps them pass through the busy street unnoticed by holding Prim close to his chest. To the casual onlooker, he's just a father holding his worn-out daughter. It may be the case in essence, but since her body hides the blood on his shirt, there’s no added attention.

The blood on his shirt. His blood. By all accounts, he should be the one who's life hangs in the balance. Not Prim’s, not his daughter’s.

His daughter. The idea that he's had a child all of this time is hard enough to wrap his brain around without the added alien DNA in her genetic mix. Aliens who have terrorized countless lives. Still, he can’t deny that whatever it is she inherited from them saved his life.

Two long blocks from where they left the support group, he stops at his car parked at the curb. They can't see the lights of the police cars, but they can see the steady stream of curious onlookers rushing away from them and towards the commotion.

He shifts Prim in his arms to reach into his pocket for his key fob and tips his head in the direction of the back seat for Katniss. As soon as she slides in, Peeta gently places Prim on her lap.

"I'm sorry," Katniss sniffs, holding Prim close but looking at him. "It was the last thing I wanted for Prim. And you…I didn’t want you to get mixed up in this. It won't take much for Snow and Coin to know who you are to her. Now that they know she has abilities like my father, they'll be after you to experiment and see what you can do."

They have such little time to have this conversation, but Peeta wants to make himself clear before they go anywhere. Stretching into the back of the car, his hands scoop her face into them and he wills her to meet his eyes. "Katniss, listen to me."

Her eyes glisten with more tears. There’s already a slick path left by those that have already fallen, but she does manage to meet his gaze.

"Don't be sorry. This is where I'm meant to be. All I ever wanted was to find you, and I have, and I don’t regret it one bit.” He makes a point of darting his eyes down to where Prim’s head rests against Katniss’s chest to tell her without words that Prim’s included, that he doesn’t regret finding out about her either, no matter what happens. “Okay?"

“Okay.” Katniss nods and drops her head so that her cheek rests on the crown of Prim's head.

Peeta closes them inside the car and quickly maneuvers into the driver's seat.

Although he begins to sweat with every police car they drive by, they make it out of the city without being stopped which allows Peeta to release the breath he'd been holding since they got into his car. One worry down, and he readies himself for the next on his long list of worries.

"How is she?" he asks to the back where he can see Katniss stroking Prim's hairline in the rear view.

"She's just sleeping, now. Her breaths aren't shallow anymore." The relief in her voice mirrors his own relief that Prim’s not going to die from this, that his daughter didn’t give up her life for his.

"My father had the same," Katniss adds but pauses as though she has to use all of her strength to force out the next word, "abilities."

"You said back at the meeting room that it was how he died?"

"My father spent most of his life hiding from them, but around the time I turned nine, they figured out a way to track us. They wanted my father because of what he could do. He said he was told by them that his body had trouble recovering from the toll it took. When I was eleven, Snow and Coin came for him and for me assuming I could do what he could, and he stopped them. It was all the strength he had left in him."

Katniss's voice sounds so small, like it did back in the meeting room and when he was twelve in the meadow. She's reliving the pain of losing her father and there is nothing he can do about that no matter how much he wishes he could make her feel better.

"My entire world crumbled in a day, and I wasn't sure how I could just move on when he died to save me, when my mother wouldn't get out of her bed. _They_ took me that night and brought you to me. You made me feel a little better to remember the good times with Dad, reminding me that I didn't want his death to be in vane. Just enough motivation to get through one more day, and then another, and another, until I was living again."

Somewhere in the back is a whisper of "thank you," but he doesn't need her to say it. It's thanks enough to understand fully how he did actually help.

"If only I could save her like my father saved me," she sighs. "If only I had the abilities she has, that he had, I could save her. I would do that."

"I know you would," he tells her, knowing fully in such a short time how Katniss would die for Prim without hesitation. In a way, he knows the feeling because he would too. In just the little time he’s spent with Prim, he’s learned how sweet and kind and full of life she is. She doesn’t deserve being hunted or having to risk her life to save others no matter whose daughter she is.

However, Katniss does confirm the question he never thought to ask. Did she have any of the alien abilities her father had and Prim has? Her answer is no, but he remembers standing near the window of the meeting room for the support group when Katniss knew without a doubt Prim was coming. Not even she seemed to know how she knew, but she did. Perhaps she did have some abilities. They may not be as strong as her father's or Prim's, but there's no denying they're there.

"How did you manage to hide from them this long? Maybe we can do it again."

Katniss shakes her head, a response he catches in the rear view. "Snow and Coin know how to track us. It's the same way the aliens track us. It's just that they lost interest in me because I have no abilities. I'm not special."

Peeta's about to disagree, because she’s always been special to him. Katniss was the only thing that made his abductions less scary, made the experience something different from what others had experienced. If that wasn’t special, he didn’t know what was. His mouth opens to tell her all of this, but she continues on without giving him a chance to say what he has to say.

"Snow and Coin may not have known, at least until today for some reason, but _they_ must've known she's special," Katniss says while smiling before giving Prim's temple a gentle kiss, "even before she was born."

"How?"

"There were several times Snow and Coin tried to capture me, hoping that I'd give birth in their facility where they could test her from the moment she was born, but _they_ wouldn't allow it. _They_ shielded me, moving me away from them every time, keeping me just out of their reach. Soon Snow and Coin got the hint to stay away, but they kept watching, waiting to see if she would be like my father.

“They also saved me when I gave birth. There was a complication, and I heard the doctors worrying that they wouldn't be able to save either of us."

Even as Peeta listens, he thinks how he could have lost Katniss and Prim, and would he have ever known? Ultimately, he decides he doesn't like this line of thought where Katniss would never be in his world again and Prim  never would at all.

"My last bit of awareness was a light so familiar and comforting that I welcomed it. I woke up feeling strong, and I knew why the doctors were confused. They couldn't understand, but I did. _They_ risked everything to save me, to save her. _They're_ usually very careful to minimize witnesses, tamper with perception. _They_ weren't as careful to stay hidden in order to save Prim. She's that important to _them_ for some reason."

This gets him thinking about his own experience, how odd it was for the aliens to abduct him in Lacy's wooded backyard. The other times they'd come for him, he was home, sleeping. The only witnesses were those already abducted, his brothers. He'd always wondered why they’d changed their usual procedure for taking him, but after Katniss's story, he wonders even more.

"So why didn't they come and save her this time?"

Katniss shakes her head and breathes out her words, "I don't know." The fear in her voice tells him all he needs to know: she's afraid they've abandoned Prim for some reason.

Looking around, they're well out of the city in Westchester when Peeta realizes he's driving aimlessly. They can’t go to her apartment, and his hotel room would only be safe for the short time it takes to track his credit card use. "We need someplace to go?"

Katniss pulls her phone from her pocket and dials a number. After a couple of seconds, the person on the other end must answer.

"Mm-hm...yes...okay," is all Katniss says before tapping her phone to end the call and stuffing it back into her jeans.

"We'll meet my contact in Pennsylvania." She doesn’t say anything more, anything about who this contact is or why Pennsylvania. First things first, he wonders something a little more urgent: "Shouldn't we toss our phones?" He figures that's what people do when they want to make it harder to be found.

"They have a faster way to track us than our phones. We need to keep moving." She'd mentioned before that Snow and Coin use the same method of tracking abductees as the aliens, but he's not sure he wants the answer of how. If there's one thing everyone taken by the aliens have in common is having been poked and prodded. A tracking device could have easily been inserted during one of those "examinations."

So he moves on to another burning question. "Can you trust this person?"

"I do, with Prim's life."

And that is all he needs to know about that. Katniss wouldn’t put Prim's life in just any hands.

"Did you tell Prim who I am to her?" This particular question spills out of his mouth. He wasn't even aware he'd been thinking about it, but now that it's out there, he really wants to know. Prim knew. She’d revealed that bit of information while trying to save him.

There's a strange look on her face before she shakes her head and sighs, "No, but I should have known that she knew, though. Prim knows things, and she was so different with you. She's always been friendly, but with you she was so curious."

Prim knows things. He could ask how does she know things, but figured he'd get the same answer as he was given when he asked Katniss how she knew Prim was coming to her. Fortunately, he has plenty of other questions to ask. "Snow and Coin. Who are they? What exactly is it that they want?"

"I don't know what they want, but they work for the government. From what I understand, they're agency is so old and shrouded in secrecy, there are very few who are aware of their existence. They're willing to kill, you've seen today, and I don't care what they want her for, they'll never have her."

* * *

Along highway I76, they arrive at a rest stop in rural Pennsylvania as Katniss’s contact directed. It’s no different from any of the other stops with its winding parking lot and small welcome center surrounded by vending machines.

Yet another RV in a sea of RVs pulls up as they wait. Peeta sighs, hoping the contact shows up soon so that they could get out of there. According to Katniss, Snow and Coin can find them fairly quickly once they're stationary, tapping into the alien technology.

A disheveled man a little weather beaten by life, or the bottle, steps out of the recently parked RV and looks around. Katniss rests Prim’s head on the back seat and jumps out of the car to run to him without a word to Peeta. She wraps her arms tightly around the man and sags as though she’s lost all of the fight in her. The man pats her back soothingly and whispers something.

“Dad?” The small voice from the back of his car tugs Peeta’s attention away from Katniss and the man who must be her contact to the small girl now sitting upright in the backseat.

“Prim? How are you feeling?” He reaches to the back to feel her forehead for a fever because that’s what fathers do…right? That’s what his father did when he wasn’t feeling well as a child.

She blinks with heavy lids, but can’t seem to focus on anything in particular. “I’m okay, I think. Where are we?”

“Pennsylvania. We’re meeting a friend of your mother’s here.”

So preoccupied with his conversation with Prim, he didn't notice Katniss and the man approach the car until he opens the back door and sticks his grizzled face into the back. “Hey, Little Bit. I hear you’re not feeling well.”

“Uncle Haymitch!” Prim managed with a little more energy from her excitement, but her voice still sounds weak.

“Wait! Haymitch? As in Haymitch Abernathy?” Peeta sputtered.

“That’s me. So I’m guessing you’re the alien-arranged baby-daddy,” he grunted, lifting Prim from the seat. He wasn’t fazed by the loud smack Katniss gave his arm. If their circumstances weren't so complicated, Peeta might have punched the man in the face for that description.

“His name is Peeta, Haymitch,” Katniss corrected him with her hands on her hips and a deep scowl firmly in place.

"Katniss, my dear niece, you know I meant nothing by it. I'm sure he's a great guy, etc. etc. Now, can we go before the white-haired demon and gray-haired ice queen get here?"

“Go where?” Katniss asks him, and a sly grin plays on Haymitch’s face.

“Where all of this started for us.”

* * *

Peeta didn’t like leaving his car, having saved diligently for years to buy it brand new. His first brand new car. Haymitch put it bluntly, though, that it was either that or have Snow and Coin haul him and his darling car away to who knew where. They had to buy some time and constantly moving in a vehicle not associated with Katniss or Peeta did just that.

As sound as that argument was, it wasn’t what changed Peeta’s mind about it. Watching Katniss guide a still weak Prim into the RV was all the encouragement for leaving his car that he needed. His daughter needed him. Katniss needed him, and he wasn’t going to let them down over a damn car.

For most of the ride, Peeta had taken a seat at the small table built into the side of the cabin while looking out the side window. He hadn’t noticed Prim had woken from her recent nap until she slides into the seat opposite him at the table, looking out the window as well.

She doesn’t look as vibrant as she did the day he met her, but she looks a far cry better than she did when they left New York.

“How are you feeling, Prim?”

“I'm feeling what you were thinking. I’m good, but not great.”

His eyes narrow at that. He’s not sure he should ask the question rattling around in his brain, but it seems he doesn’t have to.

“I can sometimes hear what people are thinking," she confesses. "It’s easier when I know them. It’s easiest with Mom and Uncle Haymitch, although Uncle Haymitch usually says what’s on his mind anyway.”

Peeta’s brows quirk up at the glaring omission in that list. Prim hadn’t turned her head from the window since she sat down until that moment, tilting her head to see over his shoulder at her uncle and mother in the driver and co-pilot seats. When she’s sure they’re preoccupied with the road and their own conversation, she turns her full attention to Peeta.

She leans forward over the table to whisper, “I knew something was different about you because I could hear your thoughts when I came home. And then I started to listen, really listen.” Her eyes drop down to the table laminated with pictures of cartoon ducks in various poses. “I’m sorry. Mom says people need their privacy and I shouldn’t, but when I heard that you agreed with Mom not to tell me you’re my dad, I couldn’t stop listening in. I just couldn’t.”

At first Peeta exhales, trying to find the right words, but are there any right words when your daughter can hear your every thought? Perhaps, and he can only hope that he’s chosen the right ones. After a long inhale, Peeta tries to even out his voice to make it soothing and not convey the jumble of nerves he feels inside. “Your mom is right, Prim. People do need their privacy, but it’s okay, too. That day was a shock for all of us, I think.”

She looks up from the table and smiles at him. “I know Mom didn’t want you to find us for my safety and yours, and I know I’m being selfish, but I’m glad you did.”

There’s the prickle of tears forming in his eyes but he holds them back. He has to be strong. His daughter needs his strength, but all he wants to do is reach out and hold her hand to assure himself that all of this is real, that she’s real and not some dream the aliens left in his brain all of these years. He can't, though, because they've only ever met twice in her life and only known about each other for three days.

Her little hands take his in them, and she doesn't hold back her own tears. 

“It’s real, Dad,” she says to him and he wonders which of them is the strong one. No matter that there’s part of _them_ mixed in her somewhere, she’s a part of him and a part of Katniss and she’s wonderful. If only he could have been there during Katniss’s difficult labor to hold her hand and assure her that everything was going to be fine even if he wouldn’t have been sure of that. If only he could have watched Prim become the kind, caring, friendly person sitting at the table with him. He’s missed out on so much.

In his mind, he's lost in a memory. He watches a doctor speaking with nurses, their movements suggest an urgency that he knows instinctively means he’s dying, but he doesn’t want his baby to die. Why can’t they just save the baby and leave him? And then he hears the snippets of frenzied conversation between the doctor and his nurses: they can’t. Both will die together if they don’t do something.

He's still in the hospital room with the doctors and nurses, but they're in different places, the doctor along with a nurse terrified with their backs pressed tightly to the wall while the other two nurses rush out of the room as a light bathes him. It’s something he’s always equated with safety. It’s his grandfather’s people and they’ve come for him and the baby. His last thoughts are of blond hair and blue eyes and the desperate desire to see Peeta one more time. Will he ever know what happened? Will he ever know that he’d carried his baby for nine months before dying? Before his eyes close, he wishes so much to see him one last time.

And then he wakes to a nervous doctor and nurse smiling down at him, offering a quiet newborn to lay on his chest. “Your daughter, Ms. Everdeen,” the nurse says.

“She’s not crying. Is she okay?” he asks because newborns are supposed to cry. It shows that their lungs are working properly. At least that's what he'd heard.

“We were concerned and tested her in every way possible. She’s perfectly healthy.”

He doesn’t need anything more said to hold the baby close and sing. “Deep in the meadow, under the willow…” because he sang that song for Peeta.

In a tiny apartment he’s only seen once and yet for almost a year, Prim’s first word is “Mama." He misses her first steps when she's almost a year old because he was working and cries all night long. She’s two years old and stomps her foot with a protruding lower lip when he tells her she can’t have another cookie. She’s four when he and his mother take her to the aquarium. She holds out her arms to the fish as though giving them a warm welcome and they welcome her in return by congregating towards her at the glass, some even displaying looping antics for her entertainment.

“Prim, you can’t,” he kneels down to tell her, looking around at the people gathering to watch the strange display. “We have to be careful. Do you understand?” But how can a four year old understand the dangers? Snow and Coin had left him alone for years because they saw he had none of his father’s abilities, and that’s what he wants them to think about his daughter. He leaves the aquarium with his mother at his side and Prim’s little hand in his as fast as they can and hopes Snow and Coin’s agents didn’t see this.

And then Peeta’s sitting at the small duck table in the RV across from Prim again. He blinks a few times to get his bearings because those were memories but they weren’t his. “Prim, what was that?”

A reddish tint spreads over her cheeks and she can barely look him in the eye.

“I heard you. I shared some of the memories I’ve picked up from Mom.”

“You know you shouldn’t do that, right? Taking memories and sharing them,” he says because he knows it’s the right thing to tell her, even though he can’t wipe the smile from his lips or the jolt of elation thrumming through his entire body that really tells her "Thank you."

Prim nods and says, “Sorry, Dad,” but the smile on her face really says "You're welcome."

“Hey, I don't know what you two are talking about back there,” Haymitch calls to them from the driver's seat, “but we’re close to our destination.”


End file.
